In this paper, we present a simple model of physics and consciousness. 

First, we present a simple model of physics. And then using the model, we explore simply, and step-by-step how consciousness could emerge from within it, giving rise to a simple model of physics and consciousness.

As with all models, this paper is less about accuracy in small technical details; but rather a simplification so that concepts can emerge with lucidity and clarity.

These models may have nothing to do with our physical reality or our consciousness. But our objective is to “start fresh”; and build a model of physics, and observe how consciousness can emerge within the model, and then, with that in mind, observe how well it aligns with our current understanding of our universe and our consciousness.

While this paper and the overall concepts are simple, they could prove to be daunting psychologically. In fact, I believe that the objections or difficulties with these models will have more to do with the potentially nausea-inducing application of the concepts to our lived existential reality than with the concepts themselves.

I hope that we can explore the concepts with courage and clarity.

A Simple Model of Physics

Let’s start with the simple model of physics.

We want to start with a blank canvas, so it’s important to discard all thoughts of the laws of physics and nature of our current universe. Let’s discard all concepts of matter, energy, space and time; all the laws of motion and gravity, all known laws of physics, and everything else. 

We will begin with a simple nothingness, a timeless and empty void. 

Then, within this nothingness, for simplicity, we begin with a set of two numbers. The specific two numbers are not important, so let's start with:

{ 7, 2 }

Imagine that is all there is. This is the entirety of our model universe, these two numbers. They are the beginning set of our simple model of physics. They are static, frozen, timeless and motionless. They may or may not be representative of anything, it doesn’t really matter “what” they are, they just “are”. They are all and everything that exists within our simple model universe.

We will call this set of numbers a  “Universe Information Packet” (UIP) or “Universe State Description” (USD).

The important point is that our UIP or USD is a total and complete description of our universe in its entirety, down to the smallest detail. It is everything and there is nothing else. There is nothing in the universe that is not contained, described or modeled exactly via the UIP. You could say that whether the UIP is “real” or “representative” is a meaningless question because they are exactly the same and there is no way to tell the difference.

Also, whether the UIP contains “numbers” or “information” or “bits" or “reality” is also essentially meaningless within the context of this paper, since the description is exactly equivalent to the reality.

While the Universe State Description describes the state of our universe; it is static and frozen, without energy, motion, or time. A UIP can be arbitrarily large, and the information or data or “reality” within it can be encoded in many different ways, but the fundamental point is that the UIP contains a full and complete description of the universe in a frozen state, without energy, motion or time.

Imagine that you could press a “STOP” button in our universe so that everything instantly freezes into timelessness. Now imagine that you could navigate the entire universe and record all the properties of every particle or waveform or entity of our universe in full and complete detail. You would record this full description of every atom and every particle in perfect, complete detail into your (very large) notebook.

That notebook transcription is a UIP, a “Universe Information Packet” or “Universe State Description”.

This is the first component of our simple model of physics.

(I know, I know … “but quantum mechanics, Einstein…” —remember, it’s a simple model.)

Next, we introduce the second component of our simple model of physics, the Universe Rule Engine (URE).

The Universe Rule Engine performs a simple task.  It takes a UIP as input, applies its rules to it, and outputs a new UIP. 

The original input UIP is discarded, and the new output UIP becomes the “current”, “real”, or “live” UIP.

Then the new/current UIP is fed into the URE, and it is discarded as the URE outputs another new, current UIP.  

This process continues over and over again, indefinitely; infinitely.

It can be thought to occur quickly, or it can be thought to take a very long time for a URE to ingest a UIP and calculate and output the new one. From the perspective of “inside” the UIP it does not matter, since it is frozen and timeless. The “actual” time needed to compute the next UIP is a meaningless question from within the UIP.

Going back to our first simple UIP, the numbers 7, 2 could represent anything (or nothing). We could imagine that the 7 is a point on a number line, and the 2 represents a “stride”. 

So our example UIP (7,2) is fed into the URE and a new UIP (9,2) emerges and (7,2) is gone. (9,2) is fed in and (11,2) emerges, and then (13,2), (15,2), (17,2), (19,2) and so on, ad-infinitum. 

For a slightly larger example; consider these UIPs. Each contains three number pairs, and the URE again simply adds the second to the first:

{ 7, 2           {9, 2 {11, 2

  3, 4       >   7, 4. > 11, 4

  2, 1 }          3, 1} 4, 1}

Of course, a UIP can be arbitrarily large; up to and beyond the size of our known universe. 

Maybe the URE has a rule that when a number reaches a certain point the sign is reversed so that it bounces back and forth. The rules of the URE could be simple or extremely complex.

Again, imagine that the universe had a STOP button. You press STOP and our entire universe freezes into a timeless, frozen, static state. You record all the properties, the position, angle, and momentum of all the particles and all of the energy waves and photons, electrons and quarks in the universe. This full description creates a UIP; it describes our current universe completely and fully in an exact frozen moment in time. 

You take this UIP and feed it into our universe’s URE. This URE contains and executes our universe’s laws of nature and physics. So our laws of nature, our laws of physics, are applied to the UIP, and out pops a new UIP. This new UIP becomes the current UIP, and the old one is discarded. Then the new UIP is fed in, and another new one pops out, and the process repeats, over and over again, forming our experienced universe.

As we think about this model, there are some salient points to consider – 

• The first is the unmistakable sense of an eternal or perpetual now. It is an apparent fact that our universe is in a perpetual “now” state between what just was, and what is just going to be. We are in an “eternal now”. There is only now. In some sense, the past and future are not “real” in the way that “now” is real. It is remarkable how “thin” and “fast” it feels when we become fully aware of this. 

• Within this model, time could be considered not “real” but instead as an “emergent” phenomenon of a transition between states.

• This universe is inherently quantized. At the lowest level, there would be “jumps” between states rather than a continuous uninterrupted flow from one state to another - kind of like a second hand that “ticks” rather than “sweeps”. Of course these jumps would be far too small for us to detect in our day-to-day lives.

So here we have proposed two elements -  a Universe Information Packet (UIP) or Universe State Description (USD) that describes the frozen, static state of the universe, and a Universe Rule Engine (URE) that takes a UIP as input, applies its rules to it, annihilates, and produces a new UIP as output, forming a continual “eternal now” universe.

Together, these two elements form our Simple Model of Physics.

A Simple Model of Consciousness

To start thinking about consciousness within this framework, again, let’s rid ourselves of our current thoughts and understandings about ourselves, our consciousness and our current universe. 

Let’s consider that there is a vast and complex UIP/URE universe unfolding that seems complex and chaotic.

And then, let’s consider that there is an entity within this UIP/URE system. This entity is some collection of features or properties within the UIP that can be considered as a collective entity, a self.

This self has no concepts or brain or consciousness, it simply exists and happens to persist from UIP to UIP purely in happenstance surviving via the rules of the URE.

Now, let’s imagine that we want to ensure that this entity persists, exists, survives and thrives in future UIPs. How would we go about this?

The important thing to remember in this framework is that there is nothing outside of the UIP. So from that perspective, it may seem hopeless; our little creature is entirely at the mercy of the unfolding UIPs.

But how could we help it? Maybe if it had some sort of apparatus within itself that is itself a part of the UIP/URE, this apparatus, this “brain” could help it to survive and thrive. How could we build this apparatus? 

The first thing this apparatus needs is an observational ability. That is the ability to gain information about the current nature of the surrounding elements within the UIP. What does that mean? It means that as the UIPs unfold state by state, portions of the UIP arrive to the entity and become ingested into it in some way that provides clues or information about the prior UIPs. This is observation. In our world, this could be photons of light hitting our eyes or sound vibrations hitting our ears and the nerve signals coming into our brain. In this model, all of this information propagates UIP by UIP.

When we have observation, the second item our apparatus needs is memory. That is, the ability to store or encode certain salient features of these observations so that they persist into future UIPs. If the observations come in but do not cause changes that persist from UIP to UIP they are meaningless and instantly forgotten.

After observation and memory, the third needed item is prediction or modeling. That is, the ability to predict or model how future UIPs might appear. Based on the incoming observations and memory that has been stored, the entity could have some heuristics or models that provide some insight or probability or guidance on what future UIPs might look like. Essentially in this way it starts to contain its own mini UIP/URE system that models and predict, in a rudimentary way, what future UIPs will look like.

A follow-on component of prediction and modeling is learning. That is, as future UIPs appear, the entity can compare how its predictions compared to the actual experience and fine-tune its predictions and models.

The next needed item for our entity to survive and thrive is goals or preferences. That is, the ability to discern, model, decide or describe, which future UIP states might be more or less preferable or desirable or undesirable for the future entity. As the entity becomes able to observe, model and predict, it can choose which predicted outcomes it prefers.

And the fifth and final needed item is action potential. That is the ability to take these observations, memories, models and preferences and put them into action so that future UIP states are different than what they would have been had no action been taken. 

It seems to me that these five items; observation, memory, modeling, goals and action potential are necessary for an entity to have any sort of meaningful control of its emergence in future UIPs. With all of this in place, depending on their quality, our entity may now have a chance to exist, survive and even thrive in future UIPs.

These must all be instantiated within a framework, apparatus, or brain that is entirely within the UIP/URE substrate.

Now, to model this out in our current world, lets imagine that we are walking down the street. We glance over and see a child pick up a rock and throw it at us -

First, we observe the child throwing the rock.

But that fact will quickly fade into history, into subsequent UIPs, so it’s essential that we don’t forget this as the rock is in flight. We must remember this information.

It’s also important to be able to model the rocks flight and that it will impact us in a future UIP.

Obviously we don’t want that to happen; we prefer not to be hit by rocks. We will be in a worse state if it does and a better state if it does not.

And so, putting this all together, we observe this with our eyes and model it in our brain and central nervous system. Our nerves send impulses to our muscles and our body takes quick action, ducking our head so the rock flies safely over our heads. As the rock’s flight emerges UIP to UIP we were able to model its trajectory and take action so our body is no longer in its path.

In this simple example, we find all five elements: observation, memory, modeling, preference and action.

Notice how quickly and instinctively all five features appear. In our universe, this ballet of the rock in flight and our cascading biological mechanism to avoid it unfold instantly but over literally millions of UIPs.

It seems to me, that these five elements; observation, memory, modeling, preference and action, can exist in a small and rudimentary way, but they can also grow more and more and more rich and complex.

It also seems to me that if these elements grow to sufficient complexity and robustness, eventually they will become self referential where the entity includes an awareness of itself in its own observations, memory and modeling. And if it becomes more complex, it can also model and integrate others as similar to self and include that in its observation, memory and modeling as well.

In fact, it seems to me that as these five elements grow and flourish (in degree but not in kind) eventually it will reach a place where an outside observer such as ourselves will say “clearly this entity is conscious”.

And so, as we flow through the “eternal now” of our universe’s UIPs, we observe, we remember, we model, we have goals and preferences and we take action. These are all mediated via our brains and our sensory organs and our nervous system.  

We do this across multiple time scales and across multiple social and meaning domains; from second to second, minute to minute, hour to hour, week to week, year to year, to lifetime, but always in the now. We take in a vast array of information about our universe, our past, our memories of ourselves, and others, constructing enormous models that are constantly being updated as the UIPs unfold. 

As this process becomes more complex, rich and more self-referential and self-aware, some form of  consciousness inevitably emerges.

And eventually we can say all sorts of things, including things like: “I need to go to the store to buy eggs to make a cake for aunt Joan’s birthday” or “I’m feeling very relaxed from taking that nap” or “why am I here, what is my existential purpose?”.

What exactly this conscious experience might be like “from the inside” is hard to say, except that it emerges UIP by UIP and this temporal emergence and feedback awareness of itself may be a key part of the experience.

As the five elements come together with sufficient robustness, something we identify as consciousness emerges. And so, if an entity wishes to exist and thrive in a UIP/URE universe, it must observe, remember, model, predict, choose and act.

As it does so, if it has sufficient sophistication, robustness and self-awareness, consciousness eventually emerges.

And so this is our Simple Model of Consciousness. 

And together this forms our Simple Model of Physics and Consciousness.